Government to Boost Supply Chain Resilience, Even With Higher Spending: Piyush Goyal

He said the government itself spends about $130 billion each year on expanding domestic infrastructure. He said that in the process, over the last 10 years, India has nearly doubled its port capacity, increased the number of airports from 74 to 158, and in the next seven to eight years, "we will increase the number of airports to 225."

He said these measures have helped create jobs and increase capacity in the country. He further said that wherever we found a concentration of production or supply in any geographical area, we focused on self-reliance. Obviously, we can't do anything about what's happening in the Red Sea or these health epidemics, but we realized that self-reliance is important.

The Israel-Hamas conflict has affected the smooth transportation of trade goods through the Red Sea, a major sea route. He said that India is also investing in building a vast network of rail, road, and inland waterways. Goyal said the aim is to build modern infrastructure to promote local industry and self-reliant manufacturing systems. He further said that India is negotiating trade agreements with the US, the European Union, Chile, Peru, New Zealand, and Oman. It has already implemented agreements with Australia, the EFTA bloc, the United Arab Emirates, and Mauritius.